The 2004 grenade attack was a hateful attempt to make the Awami League, the main opposition party at the time, leaderless.
Judge Shahed Nuruddin of Dhaka’s Speedy Trial Tribunal, who pronounced on Wednesday the judgment on the cases filed over the attack, came up with the statement in his landmark verdict, reports bdnews24.com..
Nuruddin linked the 2004 attack as part of a conspiracy that led to the killing of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.
“The conspiracy did not stop with the killing of Bangabandhu. It continued,” the judge said.
Home-grown militants in connivance with their foreign peers launched the attack, helped by the then state machinery, the judge said in his verdict.
The judge put forward a question apparently to political leaders — if politics means “heinous attacks” on the opposition.
The judge suggested that any ruling party follow an open-arm policy toward the opposition party despite all political differences.
The ruling party must make all-out efforts to establish democratic culture in the country, he said.
“Killings for political gains are not the signs of democratic thinking,” Nuruddin said.
“Ordinary people don’t want this type of political practices in their midst,” he added.
Nuruddin sentenced former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar and 18 others to death for their roles in the grenade attack that killed 24 people and injured another 500.
Tarique Rahman, son of the then prime minister Khaleda Zia, has been jailed for life along with 18 others.